A Comparative Study Between Obama's And Cameron's Inaugural Speeches From The Perspective Of CDA

Critical discourse analysis takes language as a sort of social practice and an inseparable part of social construction, among which ideology serves as an indispensable part.The thesis mainly applies Fairclough's Three-dimensional Model and Halliday's Systematic-Functional Linguistics to make an analysis and comparison between Obama's and Cameron's inaugural speeches. It begins with the description of seven related linguistic features as follows:transitivity, transformation, modality, thematic choice, lexical repetition. Then, by focusing on the three questions:"what is going on", "who is involved and in what relations" and "what is the role of language reflected in what is going on", the thesis interprets the relationship between the inaugural speeches and interaction of their application. At last, it explains the relationship between discourse and social factors in the light of social-historical context and power relations. The major findings are:(1) Obama and Cameron chose material processes to state the severe current situation; to interpret the new government policies and strategies; and to meet the need of different parties and people. They chose relational processes to establish interpersonal relationship between them and the listeners on the one hand, to construct the people's encouragement and belief on the other hand.(2)In the course of speech, Obama and Cameron used declarative clauses in order to sound more honest, objective and convincing. They used imperative clauses, in particular by Obama, to appeal to the hearers directly and arouse their interests and passion to understand their purposes; they established and embodied close relationship between them and the hearers expressed their identities and statuses. However, only one imperative in Cameron's speech, which reveals he would like to take a milder way to make sure the stable change of the government terms and make a routine comment on the former government, and don't want people's radical activities. (3) Obama and Cameron used two high-degree modalities "will" and "can" to clarify the future policies, to appeal to people to support them, and to rebuild people's confidence. "Will" and "can" in Obama's speech outnumbering those in Cameron's speech indicates Obama has stronger determination in change and firmer belief in American public's ability to change. (4) The use of the inclusive "we" made the speakers stand with the hearers, who built up the same goals, mission and interests with the speakers. The use of inclusive "we", especially 156 times in Obama's speech could shorten the distance between the speakers and the hearers, which sounded intimate. And in Cameron's speech, the 25 times of the exclusive "I" indicates the speaker hope people should believe his government first and overcome the difficulties and problem under his rebuilt government leadership.The thesis's integrated framework testifies the feasibility of exploring the relationship among language, the hidden ideologies and power relations in Obama's and Cameron's inaugural speeches, of applying Fairclough's Three-dimensional Model and Holliday's Systematic-Functional Linguistics in CDA. This thesis attempts to describe the linguistic features, to explore the social-historical context of political discourse, and to uncover the ideology and power relations hidden in the political speeches.